They Carried Their Reputations

When reading “The Things They Carried,” the eponymous chapter of Tim O’Brien’s narrative on the Vietnam War, I could not help but compare it to the last war novel that I read: Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which details the German side of trench warfare during the First World War. Both books are written with a beautiful command of the English language. Though both books are similar, they feel different. Particularly, I noticed the different ways that each story approached the issue of bravery in the face of war.

In All Quiet, the main character, Paul Bäumer, makes it no secret that war is terrifying and that being afraid is perfectly natural. He even reacts with complete understanding and sympathy when a young recruit soils himself during an attack. The soldiers, he noted, were carried on by duty and obligation to Germany. When they died, it was tragedy wrought by a pointless war waged by faceless higher-ups. In The Things They Carried, however, O’Brien seems to offer a different perspective. According to him, “They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.” These men seem not to be carried by a loyalty to the United States, but rather out of a sense of wanting to appear brave and in control. They do not want to let this war get the better of them, because they feel that that would make them weak. They belittle cowardice, when in fact fear dwells within them all.

It is also important to consider the backgrounds of both wars when comparing these two works. The soldiers of World War I did join the army out of a sense of duty to the nation. As time went on, they began to grow disillusioned and ask why they must fight men that they had no personal qualms with. The Vietnam War, however, was unpopular from the start. Men who never even dreamed of being in the army, men who did not even support the war’s aims, were drafted into the military and shipped away to fight. They were disillusioned from the beginning. This might explain the alternate attitudes toward the war.